Catherine Tate

Catherine Tate
Catherine Jane Ford (born 5 September 1968), known professionally as Catherine Tate, is an English actress, comedian and writer. She has won numerous awards for her work on the BBC sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show (2004–2007), as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and seven BAFTAs. Tate played Donna Noble in the 2006 Christmas special of Doctor Who, and later reprised her role for the fourth series in 2008, and 60th anniversary episodes in 2023.
Following the success of The Catherine Tate Show, Tate starred as Joanie Taylor ("Nan") in the BBC One comedy series Catherine Tate's Nan (2009–2015) and in the film The Nan Movie (2022). In 2011, she began a recurring role as Nellie Bertram in the U.S. version of The Office, and was a regular until the series ended. She also played the role of Miss Sarah Postern in the BBC One sitcom Big School (2013–2014) and voiced Magica De Spell in the animated series DuckTales (2017–2021). In the early 2020s, she created and starred in two sitcoms, Netflix's Hard Cell which she also co-directed, and BBC One's Queen of Oz.
Tate has appeared in films, including Love and Other Disasters, Starter for 10 (both 2006), Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution (2007), Gulliver's Travels (2010), Monte Carlo (2011), and SuperBob (2015).
Early life
Tate was born in Camden, London, on 5 September 1968 and was raised in the Brunswick Centre. Her mother, Josephine, was a florist. Tate has said that the character of Margaret in The Catherine Tate Show, who shrieks at the slightest of disturbances, is based largely on her mother. Tate never knew her father as he left very early on in her life and, consequently, she was brought up in a female-dominated environment, being cared for by her mother, grandmother, and godparents. As a child, Tate suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and was obsessed with word association. For example, she was not able to leave a jumper on the floor because it might have brought misfortune to her mother, whose name began with the letter "J" like "jumper".
Tate attended St Joseph's Roman Catholic Primary School in Holborn, and Notre Dame High School, a convent secondary school for girls in Southwark. By the time she was a teenager, she knew she wanted a professional acting career; following the abolition of the sixth form at her secondary school, she was sent to a boys' Roman Catholic school, Salesian College in Battersea, at the age of 16, as it had the necessary facilities for drama. She left school without sitting her A levels. She then tried for four years to get a place in the Central School of Speech and Drama, succeeding on her fourth attempt. She studied there for three years. Prior to getting a place there, Tate went to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, but left after a week, later stating, "Even at that age, I realised I wasn't Bonnie Langford. It was very competitive." She was also a member of the National Youth Theatre.
Born Catherine Ford, she changed her name when she got her Equity card as an actress. She chose her new surname after the character of Jessica Tate, played by Katherine Helmond, from the American sitcom television series Soap.
Career
1988–2003: Early acting and stand-up career
From 1988 to 1990 Tate toured with the National Youth Theatre production of Blood Wedding, which also starred Daniel Craig and Jessica Hynes. In 1994, she got the part of Lydia Lubey in the Oxford Stage Company production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. She then worked at the Royal National Theatre, playing small roles in The Way of the World (1995) and The Prince's Play (1996). Tate also performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company during its 10-month tour across the UK, Australia and the US with Lee Hall's adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters (2000–2001).
Her television acting career began with roles in serial dramas such as The Bill and London's Burning. Her debut happened in an episode of the sitcom Surgical Spirit in 1991. She was offered an audition for the part by the casting director who also owned a sandwich shop Tate used to go in and knew she was about to go to drama college. On the set, she got to work with actor Duncan Preston, of whom she was a big fan.
In 1996 Tate began performing stand-up comedy. Soon after, she co-wrote and starred in Barking (1998), a late-night sketch show broadcast on Channel 4 featuring a host of performers who included David Walliams, Peter Kay and Mackenzie Crook. In 2000, she became involved with Lee Mack's Perrier Comedy Award-nominated New Bits show at the Edinburgh Film Festival and appeared in television sketch shows such as The Harry Hill Show and That Peter Kay Thing. The next year, she returned to the festival with her own sell-out one-woman show, which was followed by roles in comedy series Big Train, Attention Scum, Charlie Brooker's TVGoHome and several BBC Radio productions.
After being spotted at Edinburgh by the casting director Tracey Gillham, she was given her first major television role as Angela in the comedy Wild West (2002–2004) set in the small Cornish town. Tate became pregnant before filming the first series and had to wear a lot of baggy clothes as Angela. The show also starred Dawn French as her lesbian partner and local shop and post office co-owner Mary, who commented, "Catherine Tate is far too talented and she must be destroyed."
2004–2005: Breakthrough with The Catherine Tate Show
Tate was approached at a post-show party at the Edinburgh Festival by then-BBC controller of comedy Geoffrey Perkins, who encouraged Tate to develop her character ideas, especially to push the boundaries with her teenage character Lauren Cooper. Undertaking Perkins's advice, after a live show, Tate found the audience walking out of the show repeating the character's catchphrase "Am I bovvered?".Produced by Perkins at Tiger Aspect, Tate was given her own programme on BBC Two in 2004, which she co-wrote and starred in with Derren Litten, entitled The Catherine Tate Show, which ran for three series. Two of the show's well-known characters are teenager Lauren Cooper and Joanie "Nan" Taylor, the cockney grandmother. Tate's inspiration for the grandmother character came from visits to old people's homes when she was at drama college. Tate won a British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Newcomer for her work on the first series of The Catherine Tate Show, and with the first series becoming a success, in March 2005, Tate made a guest appearance during the BBC's Red Nose Day as the character of Lauren, alongside boy band McFly, which gained her further exposure.
In November 2005 Tate appeared in another charity sketch as part of the BBC's annual Children in Need telethon. The segment was a crossover between EastEnders and The Catherine Tate Show, featuring EastEnders characters Peggy Mitchell, Little Mo Mitchell and Stacey Slater, whilst Tate appeared as Lauren. Also at that time, she was a guest star at the 77th Royal Variety Performance, appearing again in the guise of Lauren Cooper. During the sketch, Tate looked up at the Royal Box and asked the Queen, "Is one bovvered? Is one's face bovvered?", while her co-star Niky Wardley (in character as Liese) remarked: "That old man sitting next to her has fallen asleep." Prince Philip then reportedly complained to the show's executive producer, saying he had been insulted. Tate later won a British Comedy Award for Best British Comedy Actress for her work in the second series of The Catherine Tate Show.
In January 2005, Tate appeared as Mitzi Kosinki in the ITV adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel A Murder Is Announced, starring Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple. Towards the end of the year, Tate played the part of Kate in the unaired pilot episode of Lee Mack's sitcom Not Going Out and Mrs Chadband in an episode of the BBC television adaptation of Bleak House.
Tate returned to the stage for the first time since working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, to play a role in the original West End production of Some Girl(s) (2005), alongside Sara Powell, Lesley Manville, Saffron Burrows and Friends star David Schwimmer. In an interview, Tate commented that she could not look Schwimmer in the eye during her time with him, leading to speculation that the pair did not get on. Tate immediately denied the rumours, explaining that she was joking about her attempts to act "cool" around Schwimmer, whom she described as "a very funny, personable man, and easy to get along with".
2006–2010: Doctor Who and films
The third series of The Catherine Tate Show aired in 2006, going on to win the National Television Award for most popular comedy as voted for by the public, and Tate's catchphrase "bovvered", used by her character Lauren Cooper, became so influential in popular culture that it was named Word of the Year and was even poised to enter the Oxford English Dictionary. Tate also played the role of Donna Noble in Doctor Who, a temp worker from Chiswick who suddenly appears in the TARDIS at the end of the episode "Doomsday". The following episode, the Christmas special entitled "The Runaway Bride", saw Tate's character in a major role, where she was temporarily the Doctor's companion. On her appearance in the series, Tate commented, "I'm honoured and delighted to be joining David Tennant aboard the TARDIS. I was holding out for a summer season at Wigan rep but as a summer job, this'll do."Tate had roles in three films in 2006, these included Starter for 10 starring James McAvoy, Sixty Six starring Helena Bonham Carter and Eddie Marsan, and Scenes of a Sexual Nature, a debut feature screenplay from The Catherine Tate Show co-writer Aschlin Ditta. She later appeared in the films Mrs Ratcliffe's Revolution, in which she played the title character opposite Iain Glen, and Love and Other Disasters. In the television adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name, The Bad Mother's Handbook, she played the dramatic lead role and co-starred with Anne Reid, Holliday Grainger and Robert Pattinson.
On 16 March 2007 Tate appeared for a second time on the Red Nose Day telethon as some of her well-known characters from The Catherine Tate Show. She acted in sketches with David Tennant, her fellow National Youth Theatre alumni Daniel Craig, Lenny Henry and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who used the show's famous catchphrase, "Am I bovvered?". Tate also appeared as Nan in an episode of Deal or No Deal, hosted by Noel Edmonds.
She has been nominated for four BAFTA Awards for her work on The Catherine Tate Show, including Best Comedy Performance. Despite speculation that the third series of the show would be the last, Tate and the BBC have not ruled out further episodes. She later filmed a one-off special episode which aired on Christmas Day 2007. The episode was subject to criticism when 42 viewers complained about the amount of swearing, and accused Tate of bigotry over the depiction of a family from Northern Ireland as terrorists, whose Christmas presents included a balaclava and a pair of knuckle dusters, in reference to the Troubles. After the complaints were made, an Ofcom report later concluded that the show was not offensive and did not violate broadcasting regulations. An extract from the Ofcom report read: "Overall this episode was typical of The Catherine Tate Show and would not have gone beyond the expectations of its usual audience. For those not familiar with the show, the information given at the start was adequate."
In summer 2008, Tate starred as Michelle, a promiscuous mathematics teacher, in David Eldridge's Under the Blue Sky at the Duke of York's Theatre, alongside Francesca Annis and Nigel Lindsay. The first preview performance was canceled after she injured her ankle during the final dress rehearsal. Tate, however, returned to the stage the next day and performed preview shows with the aid of a crutch. Earlier that year, she returned to Doctor Who to reprise the role of the Doctor's companion throughout the fourth series, which was shown on BBC One starting on 5 April for a 13-week run. Producer Russell T Davies said, "We are delighted that one of Britain's greatest talents has agreed to join us for the fourth series." Tate added, "I am delighted to be returning to Doctor Who. I had a blast last Christmas and look forward to travelling again through time and space with that nice man from Gallifrey."
At the 2008 TV Quick Awards and SFX Awards, Tate was voted best actress for her dramatic Doctor Who performance. She also earned a nomination at the 14th National Television Awards. A year and a half after the heartbreaking finale of the fourth series, she returned as Donna in the first part of the show's festive special "The End of Time", which was broadcast on Christmas Day 2009 and became the final story for both David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Russell T Davies as showrunner. Later that day, Nan's Christmas Carol premiered, a one-off special spin-off to The Catherine Tate Show focused on Nan, who gets visited by three ghosts (played by David Tennant, Ben Miller and Roger Lloyd-Pack) in her council flat. The next day, Tate and Tennant guest hosted Jonathan Ross's BBC Radio 2 show, having already done so on 11 April and later appearing on the show once again on 30 January 2010.
In March 2010, Tate took part in Channel 4's Comedy Gala, a benefit show held in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, filmed live at the O2 Arena in London. She went on to make her directorial debut in Sky One's series of short comedy films called Little Crackers. The autobiographical short film My First Nativity (2010), also written by and starring Tate as her mother Josephine, showed the young Catherine performing an impression of Gary Glitter in her school nativity play. It received a nomination for the Best Comedy Programme at the 2011 British Academy Television Awards.
On Christmas Day 2010 Tate appeared as Queen Isabelle of Lilliput in the film adaptation of Gulliver's Travels starring Jack Black in the title role. She then starred opposite Selena Gomez in another American comedy film, Monte Carlo (2011).
2011–present: Further television and stage work
In March 2011, the video for Take That's new single "Happy Now" was debuted on Comic Relief. The video showed Tate alongside comedians Alan Carr, James Corden, John Bishop and David Walliams, all auditioning to become Take That's ultimate tribute band, Fake That. In December, she presented Channel 4's two-hour documentary Catherine Tate: Laughing at the Noughties, in which she met Carr, Walliams, Noel Fielding, Rob Brydon and her Doctor Who co-star David Tennant to discuss the comedy highlights of the 2000s. It was soon after she served as a guest host on the comedy shows The Sunday Night Project (2009) and Never Mind the Buzzcocks (2010).
From May to September 2011, Tate appeared alongside Tennant in the Shakespeare comedy Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham's Theatre. The production was recorded by Digital Theatre and is available to watch on their website. For her performance as Beatrice, Tate won the BroadwayWorld UK Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play, while her reunion with Tennant won the WhatsOnStage Award for the Theatre Event of the Year. At the same ceremony, she received an award in the Best Supporting Actress category for the Royal National Theatre production of Alan Ayckbourn's Season's Greetings (2010–2011), in which she played Belinda.
Tate guest starred in the two-part seventh season finale of the American mockumentary sitcom The Office, which aired on 19 May 2011. She portrayed Nellie Bertram, who was interviewed for the Regional Manager position of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch, the position that Michael Scott (played by Steve Carell) held for the majority of the series. She was reportedly the top choice to replace Carell, but was unable to join the filming, due to her commitment to Much Ado About Nothing. However, in January 2012 Tate returned to The Office as a series regular for the second half of season eight, reprising her role as Nellie, who was hired as a "misguided special projects manager". She continued in the role for the ninth and final season.
In May 2013, she starred alongside Lee Mack in the unaired BBC One pilot for Everybody Loves Raymond remake, titled The Smiths. Two promotional photos were released in August but the project was eventually scrapped, with Mack concentrating more on his sitcom Not Going Out. Coincidentally, Tate played Kate in the original 2005 pilot of the show, which was also never broadcast. Around the same time in 2013, she joined David Walliams and Philip Glenister in the BBC One sitcom Big School (2013–2014), playing the main role of French teacher Sarah Postern in both series of the show. Tate later appeared as a nun alongside Walliams as Lou Todd in a Red Nose Day 2015 sketch, featuring Stephen Hawking in the Andy Pipkin role.
In 2013, she accepted the role in the low-budget superhero comedy film SuperBob (2015) written by and starring Brett Goldstein as the title character, which led to a number of collaborations with Goldstein. Three episodes of her sitcom Catherine Tate's Nan, co-written with Goldstein, aired in January 2014 and December 2015 on BBC One. The role of Joanie Taylor earned her a nomination at the 2015 British Academy Television Awards for Best Female Comedy Performance. Tate calls Nan "the one [character] that's got the legs to carry on" and her favourite to play: "It's the one character I can look at on screen and not find myself in. It's a very good transformation. In lots of the others it's clear that it's me. I just enjoy playing that character mainly because you get the privilege of age where you can swear and people laugh. Old people swearing is funny." She reprised the role several times between 2009 and 2018 on Graham Norton, Michael McIntyre, Paul O'Grady and Alan Carr's television shows and performed Bonnie Tyler's song "Holding Out for a Hero" in character for Let's Sing and Dance for Comic Relief (2017).
Tate portrayed both Eva Braun and Édith Piaf in the pilot episode of the Sky Arts sketch show Psychobitches (2012). In autumn 2014, she was cast as another real-life person in her first musical production, the Menier Chocolate Factory revival of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins (2014–2015). Her character was Sara Jane Moore, a woman who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford. She went on to play alongside Mark Gatiss and Judi Dench in The Vote, a James Graham play set in a fictitious London polling station, which was broadcast live on More4 on election night 2015. In spring 2016, Tate appeared as fashion designer Myrna in another musical comedy, Miss Atomic Bomb, at the St. James Theatre. Benjamin McDonald, writing in Gay Times, praised Tate's performance, saying she "proves she has the strong vocal ability to match her impeccable comic timing". The show itself received much poorer reviews, including a one-star review from The Stage.On New Year's Day 2016, Tate played the role of hand model Sapphire Diamond in the television adaptation of David Walliams's children's book Billionaire Boy. She appeared in Bruce's Hall of Fame with Alexander Armstrong the following day with a musical tribute to her childhood hero Victoria Wood, calling her the first woman she had seen being funny on television. She then chose Wood as her inspirational female figure when promoting Leading Lady Parts (2018), a short film inspired by the Time's Up movement and starring Tate as a casting director auditioning several A-list actresses for a leading lady role.
In October 2016, Tate began touring British theatres with The Catherine Tate Show Live, guest starring Brett Goldstein (who also co-wrote the show with Tate) and her long-time collaborators Mathew Horne and Niky Wardley. Most of the main characters from the original television show, such as Nan, Lauren, nurse Bernie, Geordie Georgie and Derek Faye, all featured in the show. Some pre-recorded sketches, including cameos by Nick Grimshaw and Billy Connolly, were shown during each of the many changes of Tate's costumes and wigs. In late 2018, she brought the show to Australia and New Zealand with the help of two new cast members, David O'Reilly and Alex Carter, before finishing her tour at London's Wyndham's Theatre in January 2019. Around the same time, she hosted the 2018 Laurence Olivier Awards. An edited version of the ceremony was broadcast on ITV. It was also covered live on Magic Radio, where listeners heard Tate hilariously going back on fluffed lines multiple times, occasionally swearing. She later apologised after it was pointed out the event was going out live.
In 2016 and 2019, Tate and David Tennant reprised their Doctor Who roles in two volumes of the full-cast audio series The Tenth Doctor Adventures from Big Finish Productions. Talking about his frequent colleague during the recording session, Tennant said: "I love working with Catherine because of the life that she brings to something and the way that she can turn the most mundane line into something glorious and sparkling. I love Catherine for what she is most famous for, and that's being funny and brilliant and witty and quick, but I love the fact that she's a great and proper actress." In October 2017, Tate was revealed to be part of the cast of Disney XD's DuckTales reboot, providing the voice of the villainous sorceress Magica De Spell following the death of the character's long-time voice actor, June Foray, in July of the same year. Tennant provided the voice of the show's protagonist, Scrooge McDuck.
In April 2020, Tate revived her popular character Lauren Cooper for The Big Night In, a telethon held during the COVID-19 pandemic, in a skit that had her being schooled remotely by a teacher played again by Tennant. Another popular character from The Catherine Tate Show, Nan, made a return the next year in a Comic Relief sketch starring Daniel Craig as James Bond, followed by the feature film The Nan Movie (2022).
In April 2022, she starred as six different characters in Hard Cell, a Netflix original mockumentary sitcom set in a women's prison. She co-wrote the series with Niky Wardley and Alex Carter and co-directed all six episodes with James Kayler. In May, it was announced Tate would reprise her role as Donna Noble, alongside David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor, for the 60th anniversary specials of Doctor Who. In August, the BBC commissioned Queen of Oz, a sitcom written by and starring Tate as a disgraced member of a fictional British Royal Family sent to rule Australia, which aired in June 2023.
In May 2023, Tate was the UK's jury spokesperson in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023, in which she announced the UK's jury points directly from the Liverpool Arena, where the event was held.
Personal life
Tate was formerly in a relationship with stage manager Twig Clark, with whom she has a daughter, Erin, who was born at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in January 2003 and was delivered following an emergency surgery.
Tate suffered from post-natal depression, from which she only recovered after the filming of the second series of The Catherine Tate Show. She also suffers from occasional panic attacks. Regarding her personal outlook, Tate has said, "I'm an incredibly negative person, so any form of success is only ever going to be a relief to me and set my default position back to neutral."
It was announced in early 2019 that Tate had become engaged to American screenwriter Jeff Gutheim.
Charity work
Tate is a patron of the Laura Crane Youth Cancer Trust, supporting the charity since 2006. Since then, she has hosted a fundraising auction, filmed a five-minute film featuring herself and David Tennant on the set of Doctor Who for the charity's annual ball and taken part in its 2011 calendar with the Huddersfield Giants. She is also the current patron of the Addie Brady Foundation, raising funds for research into high-grade paediatric brain tumours and supporting families with Li–Fraumeni Syndrome, and was a patron of the children's cancer charity the Joe Glover Trust for a number of years since its launching in 2007.
Since 2005, Tate has been a frequent supporter of two BBC telethon charities, Children in Need and Comic Relief. For the latter, she so far has starred in eleven sketches and a music video. She also appeared as Lauren Cooper from The Catherine Tate Show live on stage during the Red Nose Day 2005 and 2017 events, and as Nan in 2009.
In August 2017, after being asked at the Wizard World Chicago convention about what her career would look like if she hadn't become an actress and comedian, Tate said: "I'd definitely work with animals. In fact, sometimes I do feel, 'Oh, am I sort of wasting my time doing [acting] when I should be doing sort of like stuff with animals in need?' because I'm a big animal welfare kind of person, animal rights person." She has supported the animal rescue centre Battersea Dogs & Cats Home on multiple occasions and adopted cats from there. In 2018, she presented the BBC One hour-long documentary Saving the British Bulldog about the health issues affecting one of the most popular dog breeds in the UK. In 2020, she featured in a video aimed to raise funds for the Zoological Society of London after it was badly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Filmography
Film
Television
Acting credits
Presenting and game show credits
Radio and audio dramas
Video games
Music videos
Theatre
Discography
Awards and nominations
References
Notes
Citations
External links
Catherine Tate at bbc.co.uk/comedy
The Catherine Tate Show at bbc.co.uk/comedy
Living people
20th-century English actresses
20th-century English comedians
21st-century English actresses
21st-century English comedians
21st-century English women writers
21st-century English writers
Actresses from London
Alumni of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
Audiobook narrators
British sketch comedians
English film actresses
English Shakespearean actresses
English stage actresses
English television actresses
English television writers
English women comedians
National Youth Theatre members
People from Bloomsbury
People from Holborn
Royal Shakespeare Company members
British women television writers
1969 births
British voice actresses
English voice actresses
English female screenwriters
British women screenwriters
English television directors
British television directors
Comedians from London
People with obsessive–compulsive disorder